How Things Looked In 2011

A visitor found a link to the USCCB's page, still up on their site, covering the report of Cardinal Wuerl to the November 2011 General Assembly on the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. In hindsight, several things stand out. Perhaps the biggest is what a psychologist might call "flat affect".

What is Anglicanorum coetibus?

This is an apostolic constitution issued by Pope Benedict XVI in November 2009 that authorized the creation of "ordinariates," geographic regions similar to dioceses but typically national in scope. Parishes in these ordinariates are to be Catholic yet retain elements of the Anglican heritage and liturgical practices. They are to be led by an "ordinary," who will have a role similar to a bishop, but who may be either a bishop or a priest.

Note: Anglicanorum coetibus is pronounced Anglican-orum chay-tee-boose.

While the weepy grandiosity we often now see from spokespeople for the ordinariate is happily not to be found here, the lack of any particular enthusiasm for the project is also apparent.

• In September 2010, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, was asked by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to be its delegate for the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States.
• The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops created an ad hoc committee that includes Cardinal Wuerl, Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth and Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester to assist the CDF with implementation of the document and to assess interest in an ordinariate for the United States. Fr. Scott Hurd, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, was named as a staff liaison to the committee.

(Note the reference to "in the United States". Even by November 2011, there was an expectation that there would be a separate Canadian ordinariate, something that appears to have been disapproved by Cardinal Collins at the last minute, but which was never discussed publicly.)

Another item that stands out for two big reasons is this:

Has an ordinary been named yet?

No. The canonical establishment of the ordinariate will take place on January 1, 2012, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. An ordinary for the United States will be named at that time.

The first issue is that the identity of the presumptive ordinary had to have been known to all in the loop since his resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande in 2007, moving to Rome under the auspices of Cardinal Law, whose pet project had always been the Anglican personal prelature. Jeffrey Steenson, who had attended the 1993 meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger that effectively presented a draft of Anglicanorum coetibus, was the clear choice for the job once TEC Bp Clarence Pope's failing health rendered him unsuitable.

So why the big secret? I would guess that ecumenical issues were in play, and Rome didn't want to present a picture of poaching an Episcopalian bishop directly to become a Catholic ordinary. But if Steenson left TEC in 2007, and the North American ordinariate wasn't erected until 2012, couldn't someone have decided there'd been a decent enough interval and announced his designation in, say, mid 2011?

I ask this because, in hindsight, the process of setting up the North American ordinariate was in fact ongoing, with an ad hoc committee and a staff liaison at work from 2010. The fact was that a Yale-Nashotah House clique that included Scott Hurd, Jon Chalmers, and his wife, as well as the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clergy who'd previously surrounded Steenson, all had an inside track, and it's not unreasonable to assume that the parishes to be formed and the clergy who'd be appointed to them were all known well before January 2012.

So the process was anything but transparent. Oddly, though, nearly all those who were on the inside track. from Hurd to Steenson, flamed out within a few years of the ordinariate's erection. Might the project have benefited from better personnel procedures? Not only that, but I think the implementation suffered from the assumption that everything would start up just fine on January 1, 2012. Before that magic date, nobody was in charge, there was no clear line of authority, and people were looking, for instance, to David Moyer for guidance on how TAC parishes should prepare, when Moyer, preoccupied by that time with his own legal problems, could be of no help.

The second question was simply Steenson's suitability for the job. While he was a member of an Anglo-Catholic clique within TEC, he wasn't an inspiring leadership figure, and his public utterances were few and in fact highly politic. His essay "The New Donatists", which has apparently gone down the memory hole (does anyone have a copy?) implied that those who objected to gay TEC bishops were schismatic. (Why call them Donatists otherwise?) Yet he himself made what from an Episcopalian point of view was a schismatic move only a few years later, when his career prospects improved in Rome.

His later essay "The Causes For My Becoming Catholic" is obscure and disingenuous, since it makes no mention of his still-secret position as ordinary-in-waiting, while he also sees the need to dance away from his prior accusation that those who disagree with TEC's current course are schismatics.

I continue to think the assumptions at the basis of Anglicanorum coetibus are flawed, but it's hard to avoid thinking that the project could have been implemented better if more capable people had been identified and the process had been more transparent, with clear lines of authority, from the start.

Another Atonement Insider On Fr Phillips And Anglicanorum Coetibus -- III

The insider's saga continues with the battle over the parish in early 2017;

Garcia-Siller removed Fr Phillips from the parish, installed a diocesan priest, went to Rome and tried to stop the removal of the parish from the diocese. After all, this is a wealthy parish and I am told the value of the property and the buildings alone are worth something in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars. It appears that Garcia-Siller did not do very well in Rome and his last resort was to appeal to Cardinal Wuerl in Washington, DC.

I have been told that Archbishop Garcia-Siller and Cardinal Wuerl had a very heated exchange that could be heard all over the building. In the end, a cardinal trumps an archbishop. Garcia-Siller lost the battle. Or did he? Only time will tell. The Archbishop may end up with the parish for pennies on the dollar. The parish has had to extend the fifteen year loan to thirty years to try and lower the payment. And the archdiocese still has financial consideration in the parish. It is a mess.

Fr Phillips probably felt that coming over to the ordinariate he would be reinstalled as pastor of OLOTA. This was not to be. When OLOTA was turned over to the ordinariate Fr. Phillips returned. I was there that evening. When Fr Phillips walked into a packed St Anthony Hall there was thunderous applause that lasted for at least five minutes. Bishop Lopes and Fr Perkins greeted Fr Phillips in the front of the auditorium. One of the conditions set forth by Garcia-Siller was that Fr Phillips was not to be pastor. This apparently was agreed to by all concerned.

Enter Fr Lewis. Poor man! He had a nice small parish that apparently loved him. He had his family and his parents who are aged and sickly back east. I feel each and every night he must go to bed thinking what did I do? If only I could turn back the clock. I think the same thing for Bishop Lopes and how he thought he was getting a money producing jewel until the financial shenanigans of Fr Phillips started to unravel. What he has is a parish deep in debt with uncompleted construction, a school with a diminishing student body and a lot of unhappy parishioners.

One has to remember that OLOTA population has a few converts, but most of the congregation is made up of cradle Catholics who were looking for a parish that had a reverent mass with good sermons, good music and was not a party church. Most of the Catholic churches in the San Antonio area are not very good, my opinion. In the beginning Fr. Phillips needed money and he accommodated everybody, hence the Latin Mass. The Masses at OLOTA were so reverently done that it was not unusual to see priests, nuns and seminarians from other parishes in attendance.

I asked the visitor what the attendance at the Sunday evening mass has been since the Latin mass was canceled a few weeks ago. He replied,

I have learned from a reliable source that the Mass attendance at OLOTA for the 6 PM Sunday mass (Previously the Latin mass) is down to about half of what it was. [The visitor estimated to me previously that the Latin attendance was in the 350-400 range each Sunday.] My source told me that there are some new faces at this mass, which says that even more of the folks that normally attended the Latin Mass have left. One would assume that collections are down as well.

I think this raises yet again the issue of whether the ordinariate's draw consists in some very important measure of conservative cradle Catholics who would not be eligible for "membership" in the ordinariate. And this isn't just an academic question: Fr Phillips was in fact an effective fundraiser, and insofar as this added to the income and assets of the archdiocese, the successive archbishops could look the other way over certain irregularities.

Once the ordinariate threatened to take the parish tithe and real estate assets away from the archdiocese, things changed. But by the same token, the "missions" in Murreita, CA and The Woodlands, TX (or Montgomery, if one chooses to be politically correct) threaten to poach cradle Catholics and siphon away potential donations from their respective dioceses. I would guess that the respective bishop and archbishop are currently biding their time to see how the winds blow at the CDF, given the response Abp Garcia-Siller had.

But I think the outcome in San Antonio has been to destroy a good part of the parish's value to either prelature as an ongoing asset, either for anyone's spiritual benefit or as an ongoing source of income. The visitor is probably correct that at some point, the parish will simply revert to the archdiocese for pennies on the dollar and be disposed of for its real estate value. I haven't checked to see if there's a Medieval Times restaurant franchise in San Antonio.

Another Atonement Insider On Fr Phillips And Anglicanorum Coetibus -- I

As we come closer to the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus, it's very useful to develop all the information we can on the leadup to its implementation and, not incidentally, the trail of destruction it's left in its wake. Some time ago, we had input from an insider at Our Lady of the Atonement who gave one perspective on Fr Phillips's stewardship there and the reasons that led him to keep the parish out of the North American ordinariate until 2017.

More recently, I've had extensive correspondence with a second insider who confirms aspects of the first account, but he adds perspective from someone who saw the parish from a different point of view, including that of the several hundred parishioners who attended the Sunday evening OF Latin mass almost exclusively. For this substantial group, of course, "Anglican Use" was of very little meaning. This visitor's account is quite detailed, and I'll present it in posts over several days, with my own observations interspersed.

I will start out by saying I was not one of the original parishioners at OLOTA, so I do not have knowledge of some of the early events that took place at that time. I will try to give an overview of the facts as I know them. I do know that when OLOTA first started, with about 17 people, a moderate sized house was purchased for Fr. Phillips and his large family. Again, this was before I arrived at the parish so I don't know all of the details, but the house was owned by the parish, not Fr. Phillips. Not long after this, a small church and a school were built.

As I understand it, some Franciscan nuns were brought in to teach at the school. This did not work out well. The nuns had their own idea about the school and Fr. Phillips had his idea. A battle ensued that brought in the Archbishop of the diocese to negotiate a settlement. Fr. Phillips won and the nuns left. The interesting thing here is that one of the nuns left the Franciscan order, joined a new order and is to this day still at OLOTA.

This whole affair created bad blood between Fr. Phillips and Archbishop Flores. To my knowledge the Archbishop never came back to OLOTA. When Fr. Phillips needed a bishop for any occasion, such as confirmations, he called on an older retired bishop to come out and officiate.

Because of his falling out with the diocese, Fr. Phillips became somewhat nervous about his precarious position at OLOTA. He once said to me that he wanted his own house, one not owned by the parish, to protect his family in case something happened. An aside here is that sometime after he bought this larger home, he installed a pool. When asked by a parishioner if this luxury was necessary, he responded that he never took a vow of poverty.

Interestingly, we see this tendency echoed in the priests at Our Lady of Walsingham, who live in million-dollar McMansions. (It would be worth investigating how Fr Perkins is housed as well.) The visitor also commented,

All of Fr. Phillips's family members and their spouses with the possible exception of his elder daughter were paid employees of OLOTA in different capacities. I think that the new regime has put an end to this. To my knowledge, none of Fr. Phillips's family members are still employed by the parish.[But see below]

This goes to the oh-by-the way opportunism and self-aggrandizement that seems to be so common among ordinariate priests. It seems as though both the ordinaries Houston has had so far would suggest this is not a bug but a feature. The visitor goes on,

Now on to the Ordinariate. As is well known, JPll and B16 were favorable to the whole Pastoral provision/Ordinariate idea. As this was progressing to become a reality, Fr. Phillips started a campaign to sign up the parishioners at OLOTA. He wanted big numbers, so he strongly asked that we all sign up. Most did. In the interim Fr. Phillips was invited to a bishops conference in, I think, Washington, DC. Many of us felt that Fr. Phillips was invited to this conference to be made head of the new ordinariate.

Fr. Phillips told me that one day when the conference was in session a cart was rolled out with a birthday cake on it. The cart was placed in front of Fr. Phillips and the whole assembly got up and sang happy birthday to him. I am sure, with this display, he must have felt that he was on the inside track. Unfortunately the ordinariate announcement did not materialize at that conference. He came home full of joy. It would only be a matter of time until the announcement was made.

One day in conversation with Fr. Phillips, I asked who he thought were possible candidates to be head of the upcoming ordinariate. He thought he was the rightful choice because of all he had done to bring it about. I mentioned Msgr Stetson because he was a Roman Priest who could be elevated to the rank of bishop. A married man cannot be a bishop. He was also the liaison between the Pastoral Provision and Cardinal Law who, as I understand it, was put in charge of overseeing the ordinariate by the Vatican. [see below]

I should not have mentioned Msgr Stetson's name as this precipitated a volley of expletives unbecoming a priest. Fr. Phillips did not like Msgr Stetson, but had to tolerate him because of Cardinal Law. Fr. Phillips went on to say that there are four ranks of Monsignor and the highest rank was equal to a bishop.

This confirms the earlier insider's account that Fr Phillips and Msgr Stetson were on very bad terms. What we do know in hindsight is that Msgr Steenson had been working with Cardinal Law since at least 1993 to draft what went to Cardinal Ratzinger as a proposal for Anglicanorum coetibus. Had this been implemented under John Paul, it appears that TEC Bp Clarence Pope would have become ordinary, with Steenson likely vicar general and heir presumptive. Given the more than 15-year delay, Bp Pope's declining health made Steenson the clear choice once Steenson became an Episcopalian bishop himself.

This was kept a deep dark secret, since Steenson would likely never have been voted a TEC bishop in 2004 had the plans with Law and Ratzinger come to light prematurely. In fact, the actual reason for Steenson's 2007 resignation as TEC Bishop of the Rio Grande and journey to Rome under Law's auspice never was made clear even after Steenson's designation as ordinary in 2012.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl was made delegate for implementing Anglicanorum coetibus when it was promulgated in late 2009. Wuerl in turn made Fr R Scott Hurd his day-to-day designate. Hurd, a married Anglican Use priest, continued as Steenson's first vicar general. In the spirit of mutual self-promotion and self-aggrandizement we see throughout this history, he seems to have favored a clique of young graduates from the elite Nashotah House Episcopal seminary in recommending ordinations for Episcopalian and Anglican candidates.

Msgr Stetson's position in the implementation is something of a puzzle. Fr Phillips saw him as a prime candidate for ordinary, and it's true that he had a strong link to Cardinal Law since they were both at Adams House in Harvard together in the late 1940s. However, Stetson was 80 and already retired from Opus Dei. He was given the task of supervising the entry of the St Mary of the Angels parish in Hollywood, CA into the ordinariate, since he had moved to Los Angeles.

But between Stetson himself, Hurd, Steenson, and Steenson's legal adviser, Margaret Chalmers, the project of bringing that parish into the ordinariate was bungled disastrously over a five-month period that culminated with parish dissidents starting a seven-year round of litigation that is still not over. We should not neglect this chapter in recognizing the trail of destruction Anglicanorum coetibus is leaving in its wake.

The money in the blogosphere as of 2011 was on either Fr Phillips or David Moyer to become ordinary. Moyer, a "continuing" bishop, in my view might have been the best choice among all the potential candidates. He had what I think was a realistic vision of what the ordinariate could actually become, a sense of the risks in what it quite possibly would not, and a sense of personnel and personalities, which I don't believe any other candidate had. But Steenson in hindsight was the only reasonable choice, while if nothing else, Moyer's hidden health issues would quickly have killed him if he'd gone to Houston.

I'll continue with the visitor's account tomorrow.

UPDATE: The first insider who contributed to earlier insights comments, regarding the employment of Fr Phillips's family at the parish:

This account is all correct with the exception of Fr. Phillips's eldest daughter, named Christian, was employed by the parish, in the very early days of the school, as a librarian/aide.

With the exception of his second eldest daughter, all five of his children have worked at the parish in the past - and her husband was a custodian for a time.

His only son, Nathan, had an extremely lucrative contractual relationship with the parish, during the construction of the most recent buildings ($millions spent but not completed), and he still receives payment for services rendered, from a facilities maintenance point of view.

It has been an extremely challenging endeavor for Fr. Lewis to extricate this family from the cash flow of the parish.

So, What Happened?

According to Church Militant,

Less than a week after news proving that Wuerl became aware of Abp. Theodore McCarrick's homosexual predation in 2004 — contrary to multiple statements claiming otherwise — the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. confirmed Wednesday that Wuerl will not be the principal celebrant at the Youth Rally and Mass for Life, held each year on the same day as the National March for Life.

Instead, Abp. Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio, will offer the liturgy. He will be joined by auxiliary bishops Mario Dorsonville and Roy Campbell.

At a Mass at which Wuerl presided in September, two weeks after the Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed he had protected predator priests during his tenure as bishop of Pittsburgh, one angry Catholic shouted "Shame on you!" during the homily before walking out, followed by his wife. Another woman turned her back on him throughout the duration of Wuerl's homily.

. . . Church Militant also learned that the archdiocese received multiple messages from Catholics in the past few weeks demanding that Wuerl not attend the Mass for Life.

The "multiple messages from Catholics" almost certainly refers to Fr Mark Goring's efforts on YouTube to organize his audience to send such messages protesting Wuerl's appearance. This, according to Fr Goring, made the Archdiocese of Washington unhappy with him, and in a subsequent video, he said he'd been told to "cease and desist", as his videos had "made the lives of his superiors more difficult". All of his posts on the current crisis have been deleted; the most recent one still remaining is from January 7.

Because I was interested in the Charismatic movement and Fr Goring's perspective on it, I'd subscribed to his daily e-mail. However, it appears that his daily e-mails have also been stopped. The poor guy is clearly in the doghouse.

However, it appears that the Archdiocese of Washington recognized that there are limits to what it can control. I would guess, in fact, that if Wuerl was taken off the program and replaced by the papal nuncio, this decision had to have been made in a larger context than just the chancery in Washington, and Rome was probably involved in some way, at least to approve it.

I hope that Fr Goring can quickly be rehabilitated.

Freelancing And Grandstanding

Several weeks ago, I subscribed to the YouTube channel of Fr Mark Goring, CC. I'm interested in Catholic new media, and in his case I subscribed because I wanted to learn more about the Charismatic movement in the Church. When the business about McCarrick blew up, he had a lot to say, though there wasn't much new, and I wondered how much of it was prudent.

Then he started, or tried to start, a movement. I think he called it something like the Legions of St Joseph, and the point was that they'd take up a particular issue related to the Second Crisis, and they'd commit to making phone calls and sending e-mails to designated Church organs in protest at whatever. His first effort was aimed at the Archdiocese of Washington in an attempt to discourage Cardinal Wuerl from appearing at an event. He commented earlier in the week that the Archdiocese of Washington wasn't happy with him.

I'd point to his videos about all this, but everything's been taken down. Yesterday he did put up a video saying he'd been ordered by his superiors to "cease and desist". He apologized for making their lives more difficult. Well, I guess everyone learns about this kind of thing sooner or later, and watching the situation develop, I wondered how soon life would catch up with him. It caught up right about when I figured it would. You don't get to be my age without learning something, I guess.

I note that Bp Barron and Fr Schmitz said their say and then shut up. Indeed, Abp Gómez and Cardinal DiNardo have themselves been pretty quiet. The exception seems to be Cardinal O'Malley, who just before Christmas referred Cardinal Dolan to the papal nuncio for covering up an abuse case in New York. According to Michael Voris,

What impact this will have on the U.S. bishops upcoming week-long retreat of prayer and reflection regarding their failures in the arena of sex abuse and the resulting decades of cover-up is uncertain, but it seems as though this latest bombshell will at the very least make some encounters among various bishops uncomfortable.

Nearly the entire body of U.S. bishops will be gathering at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago starting next week, and this seems like news that will cause quite the commotion.

O'Malley, who is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, seems to have fallen out of favor, at least to a degree, with Rome and Pope Francis, perhaps relating back to his revelations regarding the involvement of multiple Chilean bishops in homosexual sex abuse and cover-up and his own criticism of the Holy Father's mishandling of the case of Bp. Juan Barros.

Well, if you're Cardinal O'Malley, you can maybe get away with it. Maybe. But if there's no clear leadership, then you're going to get every Tom, Dick, and Harry freelancing and grandstanding, and in the case of Taylor Marshall, putting out stuff that's poorly presented, or in the case of Fr Goring, counterproductive.

Let's hope clear leadership and a coherent, effective strategy comes out of the Mundelein session in the coming week.

Two Bishops, Two Approaches

Barring any new revelations from state investigations, I think we've learned all we're going to know about the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. But the data points we have lead to compelling conclusions.

Then-Bp Cupich was the ordinary in Spokane from 2010 to 2014. In 2011, we know that the Jesuit provincial told him about at least seven of the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. Cupich had already been Bishop of Rapid City, SD from 1998 to 2010, so he presumably had more than a decade learning the job, and he'd been a bishop throughout the First Crisis. But as far as we know, he did nothing about the Jesuits who were theoretically living under "safety plans" but were free to come and go.

We know that Bp Thomas Daly took over from Cupich in 2015, and the press release a week ago from the diocese said he "was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House." Whether he was told anything by Cupich is unclear, although the issue seems not to have concerned him much between 2011 and his departure for Chicago.

On the other hand, the hinky Jesuits don't seem to have been a complete surprise to Daly, either, however he learned of them. In 2016, they all suddenly left Gonzaga for California, a complete coincidence, I'm sure. (However, they were relocated to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, California, in the diocese where Daly had previously been auxiliary.) By 2017, the Spokane diocese was updating its policies to be sure that no more hinky Jesuits (or hinkies of any other stripe) could come in without the bishop's knowledge and approval.

The result was, at least from a bishop-as-corporate-manager point of view, Daly had been acting prudently to deflect potential blame from the diocese, should the story become public, which in fact it did. He was also acting as a good shepherd, both protecting potential future victims and protecting the faithful from fallout over any new scandal.

The question is why Cupich, a decade older and with that much more experience as a bishop under his belt, didn't take equivalent action while he was in Spokane.

Let's look at the pattern we began to see in the First Crisis: certain bishops, like Law, Levada, and Mahony, simply had a record of protecting criminally abusive priests. But this didn't happen in a vacuum; they tolerated a great deal more open same-sex conduct and advocacy among all their clergy. There's probably a law enforcement analogy here: when police enforce quality-of-life laws, subway fare evasion or low-level vandalism, the overall crime rate decreases. The same, I strongly suspect, applies to dioceses.

Thus in the Second Crisis, we see similar records with Tobin, McCarrick, and Wuerl. And it's probably no coincidence that there are financial issues with these bishops as well. On the other hand, we're beginning to see bishops like Thomas Daly who are moving proactively, recognizing that it's simply part of a bishop's job to keep the lawn mowed, the windows clean, and the trash picked up. Even if Cupich tries to claim the Jesuit provincial didn't spell things out in words of two syllables or less, why did Daly see and act on a problem, knowing even less than Cupich, when Cupich apparently ignored it?

Although Cupich, if you get right down to it, doesn't strike me as very smart. This may be why he's where he is, and why he's still Pope Francis's point man for dealing with the Second Crisis.

Let's hope Bp Daly continues to advance in his career.

North American Ordinariate Year-End News

My regular correspondent sent me an update on two relatively new communities:

I just wanted to update you on one of your stories from earlier in 2018: Dcn (Blake) Gregory Tipton and the OCSP community of St Aelred, Athens, GA, I was interested that their monthly DW mass is now celebrated on Sunday afternoon in the chapel of St Joseph School, where Mrs Tipton works, rather than in the parish church, but the investigation is complicated by the fact that the diocesan parish doesn't have a church, really. Having outgrown their downtown building the congregation has been using the multipurpose gym at the school for the last two years while a new church is being planned.

This is obviously good news for the growing parish but I can see that attracting current Episcopalians to this worship environment might be challenging. I cannot find any pictures of the school chapel on the web, unfortunately. There are two Episcopalian churches and one "continuing" Anglican church in Athens with attractive traditional church premises. Both the rector and the associate rector of the local TEC parish of which Dcn Tipton was previously a member are former Catholic priests---the Rector was a Capuchin for many years.

Dcn Tipton has a blog on the St Aelred website, and I must say that his writing skills have not improved since the earlier samples which you labelled "word salad." A disconcerting blend of Wikipedia-style information of dubious relevance and random personal observations. Dcn Tipton is still teaching history and theology at the local Catholic high school and I must say I do not envy his students. It will be interesting to see if/when he proceeds to priestly ordination.

Mr Philip Mayer at St James, St Augustine FL is expecting to be ordained priest January 27 2019 according to the St James website.

Let's hold up the mirror of the gay-networks crisis in the larger Church to this minor news. One theory of Anglicanorum coetibus is that it's an attempt to swell the diminishing ranks of celibate priests by taking in disaffected Anglicans, perhaps also as an experiment to test larger acceptance of married clergy. But the examples of Dcns Tipton and Mayer aren't apples-to-apples comparisons -- Dcn Mayer appears not to have worked out over years as a Pastoral Provision candidate in the Diocese of St Petersburg, while Dcn Tipton appears to have been a marginal candidate for TEC ordination who looked to the OCSP only after he failed to get a footing in the local TEC diocese.

I think we can begin to conclude that the reason for Anglicanorum coetibus is careers within the Church, with laity playing a very secondary role. In our more recent broader perspective, Steven Lopes has followed an existing career path, becoming secretary to a corrupt cardinal, William Levada, much as Donald Wuerl became secretary to John Wright. One question is why he wasn't given a small territorial diocese on the normal promotion ladder for bishops, when instead he got a project that's turned out to be a loser from the start. There's been no real change over the Steenson regime, either.

Nor is the OCSP bringing in exceptional parish priests. The roughly 60 mediocrities don't strike me as any answer to the problem of diminished celibate vocations, and in fact, there's been no real decrease in the risk exposure, given the examples of Frs Kenyon and Reese. This is almost certainly because Anglican priests who consider leaving their denominations for the OCSP are almost always doing this because they aren't succeeding as Anglicans, and a certain percentage of these aren't succeeding because their Anglican vestries and bishops want them out for good reason.

Looking at Anglicanorum coetibus from the broader Church perspective, I think a better solution to the problems it's presumptively meant to address will be to reform the seminaries and get the gay networks out of the vocation business, while encouraging vocations in parishes by strong preaching and personal example and the influence of server programs and reverent liturgy.

Cardinal Levada DUI

I mentioned Cardinal William Levada in a recent post as a member of Roger Mahony's "Gang O'Four" from St John's Seminary in Camarillo, CA, the seminary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. A visitor sent me a link to a 2015 story on Levada's arrest for DUI at age 79 while on vacation with other priests in Hawaii. Levada, let's recall, was Joseph Ratzinger's choice to succeed him as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Ratzinger became pope in 2005.

All I can say is that these old guys must be hard partiers. Levada's colleague Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio is reported to have presided over the cocaine-fueled orgy at which other arrests were made in the CDF building in 2017; the report is that Coccopalmerio was advised to leave by the police before they began making the arrests. My only question about Levada is what BAC he blew when the Hawaii police pulled him over; as someone who partied at the Animal House myself in my younger days, I'd love to know how the old guy did! (A visitor helped out: he blew a .168.) Of course, drunkenness is a mortal sin, and somewhere in early middle age I resolved not to consume any alcohol if there was a chance I'd be driving.

Levada had an extensive record before this, however. Ms Engel gives a summary of his career in The Rite of Sodomy:

Bishop William J. Levada, like Roger Cardinal Mahony and Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann, was an alumnus of Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary. After graduation from St. John’s Seminary, Levada was put on the ecclesiastical fast track. He was sent to Rome for advanced theological studies at the “Greg” and was ordained a priest of the Los Angeles Archdiocese in St.Peter’s Basilica in December 1961.

After a brief return to Los Angeles during which time he served as assistant pastor, Levada went back to Rome, completed his Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and then came back to St. John’s Seminary where he taught for six years.

In 1976, Levada was called back to the Vatican and assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 1982, Cardinal Timothy Manning asked that Levada be released to fill the post of Executive Director of the California Catholic Conference in Sacramento. One year later, Manning ordained Levada an Auxiliary Bishop.

In the fall of 1986, only 14 months after Archbishop Mahony took possession of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Levada was appointed Archbishop of Portland, Ore. When the Archdiocese of San Francisco opened up in December 1995 with the resignation of Archbishop John R. Quinn, Cardinal Mahony obtained the coveted post for his former classmate. Not surprisingly, Archbishop Levada’s motto is Fratres in Unum, or Brothers at one, taken from the first verse of the 133rd Psalm. (pp 803-4)

This leaves out the whole sorry saga of Levada's protégé Bishop of Santa Rosa, CA G.Patrick Ziemann, who abruptly resigned in 1999 after a former Ukiah priest filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault. A series of lawsuits followed, based on accusations of abuse dating back to 1968. Levada, at the time Archbishop of San Francisco, continued to cover for Ziemann even after his resignation. Engel in an update to The Rite of Socomy continues Levada's story:

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI has appointed “gay friendly” Archbishop William Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco to head the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and has awarded him the red hat. Levada in turn, with the help of “gay friendly” Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, has secured his former archdiocese [San Francisco] for his boyhood buddy “gay friendly” Archbishop George “Brokeback” Niederauer. Levada and Niederauer were classmates at St. John’s Seminary and pederasty training camp in Camarillo, Calif., and they co-own a retirement condo in Long Beach. Niederauer insists there is no link between pederasty and homosexuality and is a proponent of ordaining “gays” as long as they are “celibate.” (p 1171)

Following his retirement, Levada lives at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, CA, which Engel describes as "another 'Pink Palace.'" (p 810) It's worth pointing out that another Levada protégé, now-Bp Steven Lopes, is a graduate of St Patrick's Menlo Park. According to Wikipedia, Lopes was ordained a priest on June 23, 2001, for the Archdiocese of San Francisco by William Levada. He was a personal aide to Cardinal Levada while Levada was Prefect of the CDF from 2005 to 2012. This is a career path similar to Donald Wuerl.

In fact, when Lopes was made Bishop of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in 2016, his consecrators were Gerhard Müller, Donald Wuerl, and Levada himself. Thus it goes with a certain type of aristocracy in the Vatican. Jeffrey Steenson was unavailable for comment.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds,

Regarding Bp Lopes, this might explain why Fr Catania, who had a very rough time of it during the Steenson regime, was given a plum posting by Bp Lopes. As I have mentioned, while waiting for Fr Scheiblhofer to pack up at St Barnabas, Omaha (he is now ministering at a local diocesan parish) Fr Catania was living in the rectory at Holy Trinity, Omaha and supplying while the Pastor went on vacation with---Bp Lopes.

DiNardo And The Anglicans

Anglicanorum coetibus has been less and less on my mind, so it's useful that my regular correspondent sent me another context to our look at Cardinal DiNardo:

Cardinal DiNardo has of course been closely connected with the North American ordinariate (OCSP) since before its official erection, as we read here. No doubt he worked with the Davises [see below] to have them fund Steenson's "visiting professorship" at St Mary's Seminary Houston ahead of his appointment as Ordinary, and the school at which DiNardo's brother-in-law, the husband of his twin sister, was president to create a chaplain's job for Fr Steve Sellers. Fr Sellers is now the President of St John XXIII Prep; his successors as chaplain have both been OCSP clergy otherwise unemployed. The school cafetorium is also the location of the St Margaret's, Katy OCSP community led by Fr Sellers.

Carl and Lois Davis first appeared here in a 2016 post. Major philanthropists, they are former Episcopalians who became Catholic, and since 2001, they've been members of the Our Lady of Walsingham parish, which before the erection of the OCSP in 2012 was Anglican Use, which meant it was part of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, whose ordinary has been now-Cardinal DiNardo since 2004.

As I noted in the 2016 post, the Davises are behind a non-profit called the Walsingham Foundation that has apparently received multimillion-dollar grants from the Carl and Lois Davis Foundation. As I understand these things, the Catholic Church works something like the Mafia in one important respect, in that the Operation gets its cut from all such donations. DiNardo would have been in a position to pass on a portion of his cut to Rome as well, as far as I can see.

It's notable that DNardo seems to have been much more willing to give up the Our Lady of Walsingham parish in 2012 than Abp Garcia-Siller of San Antonio was to give up Our Lady of the Atonement in 2017, which suggests to me that some equitable arrangement must have been worked out among Steenson, DiNardo, and the Davises before the OCSP was erected. The Davises, as far as I can see, continue to donate to Catholic, and presumably archdiocesan, causes outside Our Lady of Walsingham.

That plum positions for otherwise not-as-employable OCSP clergy continue to be available in Galveston-Houston archdiocesan jobs also gives DiNardo a measure of influence over Bp Lopes. But beyond that, there'a another question: where does Bp Lopes live? I can't imagine that the tithe from the dozen or so productive parishes in the OCSP can maintain anyone in the style to which bishops are accustomed. This makes me wonder if Lopes is accommodated in an archdiocesan facility. Can anyone answer this?

But DiNardo's role in Anglicanorum coetibus is a reminder of where he stands in the order of things. The constitution was a project of Bernard Law, which he presumably was able to supervise much more actively when he went to Rome in 2003. Donald Wuerl became the delegate for implementing it in 2010-11. Our Lady of Walsingham was the principal Anglican Use parish and the location from which William Stetson, the secretary to the delegate, worked. There must have been considerable interaction between Wuerl and DiNardo in the runup.

DiNardo in any case, especially in light of my update to yesterday's post, had been a protégé of Wuerl at least from the days he served as spiritual director to the seminarians in the gay-friendly St Paul's seminary in Pittsburgh while Wuerl was rector. I suspect that nothing happened in the runup to the erection of the OCSP that was not to the explicit wishes of Wuerl and Law. DiNardo was with the program.

Is it any wonder that the two most public Catholics who are former Anglican priests are Fr Longenecker and Dr Marshall? Both operate completely outside either Anglican Use or the OCSP. Given DiNardo's less than reassuring background, I strongly suspect no action will be undertaken by the US bishops over homosexuality in the priesthood that rocks any boats.

George Neumayr On The DiNardo Chain Of Paternity

In a recent column, George Neumayr, who pursued Donald Wuerl with some prescience, asks a legitimate question: so, who made Daniel DiNardo, the current president of the USCCB and a leader of the presumptive moderate faction of bishops? The answer is neither very clear nor especially reassuring.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, whose Galveston-Houston chancery was raided this week by prosecutors in search of abuse-related files, always struck me as a pretty haunted and compromised figure. DiNardo came out of Pittsburgh and the corrupt milieu of Cardinal John Wright, who was an accused pederast and a mentor to such slimy prelates as Donald Wuerl. Google DiNardo and Cardinal Wright and a creepy picture comes up of a young DiNardo sitting next to Wright in a white tuxedo. Wright liked to dress his seminarians up in such attire, just as Wuerl would later delight in having his young priests wear waiters’ uniforms and serve appetizers at parties held at his Pittsburgh mansion.

For whatever reason, the Spectator didn't run the picture, but it's on Google, so here it is. DiNardo is seated to the left of Wright. The photo is noted as from the Bishop's Latin School, which DiNardo attended from 1964 to 1967 while Wright was Bishop of Pittsburgh. Neumayr calls Wright "one of the godfathers of a high-living, dilettantish Gay Mafia within the Church", although I think even a godfather had a daddy, and who that might be still isn't clear.

UPDATE: William M. Ogrodowski, standing to the right of DiNardo in the photo, was rector of St Paul's seminary in Pittsburgh from 1986 to 1990. DiNardo was a part-time professor and spiritual director of the seminarians there in the early 1980s. Donald Wuerl was rector of the seminary during the same period, 1980--85. An anonymous comment on a Washington Catholic blog, for what it's worth, says, "The saying was at St. Paul's Seminary in Pittsburgh that you couldn't make it unless you had a twrill [twirl?] with Wuerl." Engel says in The Rite of Sodomy, "The seminary had a reputation for rampant homosexuality going back to the days of Bishop Wright." (p 712) In fact, Wright founded it in its current form in 1965.

Randy Engel doesn't mention DiNardo at all in The Rite of Sodomy, although she mentions Wuerl as a gay-friendly Bishop of Pittsburgh, and she's fairly detailed on Wright's career. DiNardo, 69, isn't that much younger than Wuerl, 78, and his earlier career was centered in Pittsburgh and the Vatican bureaucracy. According to Wikipedia,

DiNardo was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Vincent Leonard on July 16, 1977. He then served as parochial vicar at St. Pius X Church in Brookline until 1980. In 1981, he was named Assistant Chancellor of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and part-time professor at St. Paul Seminary. While at St. Paul, he served as spiritual director to the seminarians.

From 1984 to 1990, DiNardo worked in Rome as a staff member of the Congregation for Bishops in the Roman Curia. During this time, he also served as the director of Villa Stritch (1986–1989), the house for American clergy working for the Holy See, and an adjunct professor at the Pontifical North American College.

Upon his return to the United States in 1991, he was named Assistant Secretary for Education for the Pittsburgh diocese and concurrently served as co-pastor with Paul J. Bradley of Madonna del Castello Church in Swissvale. He became the founding pastor of Saints John & Paul Parish in Franklin Park in 1994.

John Wright, who was Bishop of Pittsburgh from 1959 to 1969, served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy from 1969 until his death in 1979. Wuerl became Wright's secretary as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1967 and moved with him to Rome, continuing as his secretary as prefect. As Bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, Wuerl probably had some role in bringing DiNardo back to Pittsburgh from Rome and also served as a co-consecrator at DiNardo's 1998 consecration as Bishop of Sioux City.

Neumayr's article quotes a great deal mostly about Wright from other sources, which I've already quoted here, and in fact he's skimpy on other details of chronology, which I've had to fill in from Wikipedia. I think it's also significant that The Rite of Sodomy is sufficiently out of date that it doesn't mention DiNardo at all, even though he's now a key figure in AmChurch who owes his rise pretty clearly to Wuerl.

And this completely leaves out the role of mentors in Rome who must also have had a good deal of influence on DiNardo's advancement. There's a great deal more we need to learn.

George Neumayr On The New Chains Of Paternity

One concern I've had in trying to stay informed on the current crisis is that the more useful books on the First Crisis, like Engel's The Rite of Sodomy, Lawler's The Faithful Departed, and various writings from A W Richard Sipe, are close to a generation out of date. Engel does list chains of paternity, but most of the names are now retired, dead, or out of the active priesthood.

I've seen George Neumayr primarily as a Washington-based anti-Wuerl gadfly, but more recently he seems to have picked up his game and is widening his field. The most recent example is a piece in The American Spectator, The Stench From CupichChurch. Earlier, he'd focused on Joseph Tobin and his sometime Italian roommate -- and in the course of his reportorial efforts, he seems to have succeeded in getting him banished from the rectory.

Now he's taken on Cardinal Cupich.

It was McCarrick who whispered in the pope’s ear about appointing the relatively obscure Cupich to the immensely important archdiocese of Chicago. Overnight this appointment turned the nebbishy Cupich into the most powerful cardinal in America.

I love the nebbishy part. As someone who spent a career in corporate politics, he reminds me of the temporary favorite of mahogany row, the kind of guy who has a certain kind of trademark good hair and always stands up flashing it at meetings. (That's led me to wonder if Cupich has a toupee -- I don't think so, after study, but it's such a contrived image that it may as well be one.) But as I've said before, I don't think he has staying power, and if Neumayr is on his case, I don't see a bright future for the guy.

But more important, he goes on to list new chains of paternity.

Not a single McCarrick crony has been demoted under Pope Francis. Some of them, such as Paterson (New Jersey) Bishop Arthur Serratelli, preside over openly corrupt dioceses. A wispy protégé of McCarrick’s, Serratelli is known for, among other acts of astonishing corruption, making Fr. Hernan Arias, a credibly accused gay predator, his vocations director. Arias no longer holds that post, but he remains pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland despite the fact that he is under Vatican investigation for an allegation of sexual assault against a college student who was thinking about becoming a priest. Serratelli knew about this charge before he made Arias vocations director, according to a source close to the Paterson chancery.

Arias is so close to Serratelli that people in the know in the diocese refer to him as “Mrs. Serratelli” or the “First Lady,” said this source. “Serratelli, Arias, and Edgar Rivera (the current vocations director) go on vacation every year together to the Dominican Republic,” added this source.

The whereabouts of Arias are not known, even though on paper he remains St. Margaret’s pastor. Another corrupt Paterson priest on the run is Fr. Patrick Ryan, who (I’m told by well-placed Paterson sources) is under state investigation for embezzling money from St. James of the Marches parish to finance his gay lifestyle. “He has been ripping off the second collection for years, and with some of that money bought a house for his gay lover,” according to a chancery-connected source.

This goes to one of the problems in just writing off adult same-sex conduct as "consensual". Financial scandals stemming from a wish to put a boyfriend in a house aren't unheard of. In addition,

Why did Ryan leave Albany for Paterson? Speculation abounds. “He used to cruise parks up there,” says one priest. Another source suspects that Ryan got to Paterson on a “prisoner exchange” — a trade of deviant priests undertaken by former bishops of Paterson and Albany designed to keep inquiring cops at bay.

This is another exposure that results from gay priests, the potential for lewd conduct arrests in parks and restrooms. This resonates, to be sure, with the case of the two Chicago priests arrested for just this in Miami last September,

In a statement, the Archdiocese of Chicago said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, who serves as the ninth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, immediately removed Berrio from ministry and withdrew his ability to minister.

The Archdiocese of Chicago also said it has told Giraldo-Cortez's home diocese in Soacha that Giraldo-Cortez will "not be granted additional faculties to minister."

"It is our responsibility to ensure those who serve our people are fit for ministry. We take this matter very seriously and will provide updates as they become available," the Archdiocese of Chicago wrote.

Do you mean to say the Archdiocese of Chicago had no inkling that these two guys were unfit for ministry before their arrest for public lewdness?

A Few Thoughts On The Cupich Denial

As I get ready to take a few days off blogging for the US holiday, something nevertheless occurred to me about Cardinal Cupich's denial that he and "Wuerl collaborated on a plan that would exclude the laity from oversight of episcopal conduct and instead allow U.S. bishops to police themselves on sex abuse."

The problem I have with this denial is what I noted in Saturday's post: in his remarks at the Baltimore conference, he stood up to gain the floor to announce an alternate agenda even before Cardinal DiNardo had finished speaking.

This strongly suggests that, even if a full policy draft of some sort hadn't been formally approved, there was clearly an alternate plan for the discussion that he was going to enforce, effectively speaking on behalf of Francis.

His not entirely coherent remarks about "anonymous", "consensual", and "pornography" suggest these words had been put in his mind in the course of some kind of discussion, although he pretty clearly didn't understand them very well himself. That means someone else gave them to him -- possibly not Wuerl; I'm not sure if Wuerl is much smarter than Cupich.

Thus it could well be true that, strictly speaking, neither Wuerl nor Cupich collaborated on a olan -- but I would guess they signed onto a plan (insofar as they were capable of understanding it, a serious question) that someone else gave them.

What this does say is that the powers that be don't have many capable people supporting them, which is a reason to take heart.

Cupich And Wuerl Deny Complicity In Baltimore Delay

Thanks to a visitor for sending me the link to a Crux story from yesterday:

Cardinal Blase Cupich is firing back against claims that he sought to advance an alternative proposal for bishop accountability ahead of last week’s meeting in Baltimore, in place of the plan put forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

“The allegation is false,” the archbishop of Chicago told Crux on Sunday, in response to a Catholic News Agency (CNA) report Friday that he and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated on a separate proposal.

“At no time prior to the Baltimore meeting did the two of us collaborate in developing, nor even talk about, an alternative plan,” he said.

Further,

Cupich said that he, along with the other cardinals, were summoned to DiNardo’s hotel suite by USCCB General Secretary Monsignor Brian Bransfield on Monday morning ahead of the start of the general meeting, and they were informed of the delay. While all cardinals were invited to attend the meeting, only he and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, were present, he recalled.

Contrary to the CNA report, which alleges Wuerl and Cupich collaborated “for weeks and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore,” both Cupich and a spokesman for Wuerl insist that’s false.

Cupich told Crux that upon arrival in Baltimore, and hearing the news of the delay in voting, he consulted with numerous bishops on the plan that he eventually submitted.

I strongly suspect weasel-wording in these denials -- I tend to agree with the occasional analysis I've seen that it's in Francis's interest to delay any independent plan in the US until the February 2019 synod can address it, when, as with other Franciscan synods, he can directly control the outcome. There's little argument that in the Baltimore discussion, Cupich came out supporting Francis's delay and an agenda other than the one that was on the USCCB's table.

There's another issue here: all of a sudden, Msgr Brian Bransfield turns up as a key actor as USCCB General Secretary. We will recall that this position is an immediate stepping stone to more powerful rank in the US hierarchy, as it was Joseph Bernardin's post before he became a bishop. However, as we discovered yesterday, his cousin, Michael Bransfield, recently resigned as Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, WV.

Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

Yet Bransfield's cousin is General Secretary of the USCCB! The rot is pervasive -- and, pace Cupich and Wuerl, regardless of who ran a draft of whichever by whom on what date, there's pretty clearly an effort to promote a single agenda by Francis, Wuerl, Cupich, and Bransfield.

More News On Financial Accountability And The Papal Foundation

In the context of the last post, in which Matthew O'Brien questioned the legal sustainability of the Papal Foundation's forwarding grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State without confirming that the money was going for its intended purpose, it appears that another prestigious US Catholic charity has raised the same question and is acting on it. According to Church Militant, Legatus Chairman Thomas Monaghan issued a letter to members making clear it was not yet "prudent" to send money to the Vatican:

"Events over the past few weeks have prompted many members to contact the national office and members of the Board of Governors regarding the current crisis in the Church," the Sept. 6 letter from Monaghan states.

"We have also had discussions regarding our (Legatus') annual tithe to the Holy See, specifically pertaining to how it is being used, and what financial accountability exists within the Vatican for such charitable contributions," the letter continues. "The Board has begun a dialogue along these lines, and in the meantime has decided to place the Holy See annual tithe in escrow, pending further determination (by the Board).

"We certainly pledge our continued devotion to Holy Mother Church, and recognize the tithe has been an important commitment of Legatus since our founding," Monaghan wrote. "However, in light of recent revelations and questions, we believe it appropriate to respectfully request clarification regarding the specific use of these funds."

A second Church Militant story brings the O'Brien First Things piece up to date:

After Cdl. Donald Wuerl spearheaded a $25 million grant to the Vatican earlier this year through the Papal Foundation, sources confirm the money remains unaccounted for, the Rome hospital designated as beneficiary apparently never having received the grant.

This reinforces the issue raised in the O'Brien story, that there is no guarantee that money solicited by the Vatican for one charitable purpose will even be used at all for that purpose. The Church Militant story continues,

Media reported in March that, after the internal uprising within the foundation, Pope Francis cancelled an annual meeting with the organization. Although the move was reported as originating with the pontiff, inside sources confirm with Church Militant that Wuerl was behind the cancellation. The cardinal had contacted the pontiff and suggested the move in order to send a clear message and muscle the trustees. His tactic worked, and the board agreed to give the pope the remaining $12 million. To date, however, the remaining amount is pending distribution.

. . . The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is mulling the possibility of investigating the Papal Foundation, a 501(c)3 corporation registered in Pennsylvania and bound by state law, after it was revealed the vote to send $25 million to Rome could be voided for potential fraud; McCarrick, under investigation by the Vatican since May 2017 over a sex abuse allegation, voted to send the enormous sum of money to the very entity investigating him — a material conflict of interest that would amount to little more than a bribe.

"The Charitable Trusts and Organizations Section (CT&O) of the Office of Attorney General is in receipt of your email complaint regarding The Papal Foundation," wrote Daniel Sanchez, financial investigator for the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, in a letter obtained by Church Militant. "Please be advised, this matter is currently under review and the office will take any action deemed appropriate."

The Church Militant article clarifies other earlier reports on the revolt within the Papal Foundation. The earlier version of the story was that Jim Longon, former chair of the Audit Committee, was the only lay resignation from the board. According to Church Militant, a total of three stewards resigned from the Audit Committee. In adition,

According to inside sources, Wuerl at the time considered Longon a lone maverick, confident the vote to send the $25 million would be approved almost unanimously. He was shocked to find that nine of the 24 board members rejected the proposal after a secret vote.

It seems to me that the issue here is not so much a withholding of charitable donations simply due to disagreement on doctrine, but more seriously, on whether it is prudent to keep sending money to the Vatican when it isn't clear that the money will be used for charitable purposes. This could affect the non-profit status of the charitable foundations, and conceivably the non-profit status of the Church in the US.

Back To The Papal Foundation

Via a French site a visitor pointed me to, I found an article by Matthew O'Brien in First Things from last September, The Papal Foundation & McCarrick's Conflict of Interest. We're seeing increased speculation on how Francis might somehow be encouraged to abdicate, but in light of the political background in which Bergoglio formed his sense of obligation, I would say that caudillos mostly don't leave office unless they're put on the plane by a successor group of colonels. Or put in the ground, for that matter. So I don't give the idea of abdication much chance, but then, what do I know?

I'm inclined to agree with commentators like Marco Tosatti in yesterday's post that pressure from the US legal system will probably be a better route to limiting any mischief Francis can create. Per O'Brien:

As an ex officio member of the board of cardinals which controls the Foundation, McCarrick advocated and voted four times to approve an extraordinary, expedited grant of $25 million to the Vatican, in order to help it bail out a scandal-plagued dermatology hospital that it controls, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI) in Rome: first in executive session in June 2017, then at the Foundation’s annual meeting in December 2017, again in January 2018, and finally in April 2018.

During at least the latter three votes, then-Cardinal McCarrick knew that he was under a Vatican-authorized investigation, carried out by the Archdiocese of New York, for sexually molesting a boy. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter, McCarrick knew by October 2017 at the latest that he was under investigation. Because the recipient of the $25 million grant was the Vatican, which was the very entity that would determine McCarrick’s fate as a result of the investigation it authorized into his conduct, McCarrick appears to have had a manifest and gross conflict of interest in considering the grant request in the best interest of the Papal Foundation. McCarrick stood to benefit personally if, by helping to secure $25 million for the Vatican, he could win leniency in how it handled his sex abuse case.

Under Pennsylvania law, the directors of non-profits such as the Papal Foundation are under an obligation to disclose material conflicts of interest to their organization’s directors and officers, and to recuse themselves from board decisions in which their conflict of interest is implicated. McCarrick failed to make any disclosures to the Papal Foundation’s board or to recuse himself from board decisions, according to people present at the board meetings in 2017 and 2018.

O'Brien then lists at length circumstances under which the foundation board has not operated under legal definitions of "good faith" in disbursing grants, in particular by not confirming with the ultimate grantees whether they actually received the amounts designated in the foundation's grants. The basic problem is that the foundation sends the grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State, which passes it on to the grantee. The clear issue is whether, as a possible example, the foundation granted the Secretariat of State $200,000 for a school project, but the school received only $20,000, with the remainder going elsewhere.

In late 2017 Cardinal Wuerl tasked the Foundation’s legal counsel to review its operations and bylaws for legal compliance. In a letter dated December 29, 2017, a copy of which was provided to me by a person involved with the Papal Foundation, its own attorneys identify five problem areas in the Foundation’s operations and procedures. Two of these were particularly important: first, an apparent general failure to confirm that the ultimate recipients of its grants were operated in a fashion analogous to US public charities; second, an apparent general failure to obtain meaningful audits or accountings of how grant beneficiaries spent the money they received. The Foundation’s attorneys concluded this assessment with an injunction, “There must be some accountability for the Board to satisfy itself that funds are indeed expended for charity.”

The cardinals’ board of the Papal Foundation apparently distributed its charitable grants in a manner that made them remarkably vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement, and in so doing, the board appears to have contravened its own bylaws, and thus violated Pennsylvania civil law as well. The Foundation’s chosen partner in distributing grants, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has a longstanding reputation of financial mismanagement. In recent years the Secretary of State himself, Cardinal Parolin’s predecessor Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was personally involved in misappropriating $500,000 in charitable assets to double pay a contractor friend to renovate his Vatican apartment, and also in directing millions of dollars from the Holy See into now-failed Italian television venture owned by his friends.

O'Brien raises questions about whether approving or directing Papal Foundation grants was a factor in McCarrick's rise, as well as that of other McCarrick protégés.

No prelate has been more consistently and intimately involved in the Papal Foundation than McCarrick, who helped to found the non-profit in 1988 alongside the late Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and Cardinal O’Connor of New York. The current chairman of the controlling board of cardinals is Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington. Before he was elevated to the cardinalate and moved to Rome, then-Bishop Kevin Farrell, McCarrick’s protégé and former housemate in Washington, was a member of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees. The current president of the board of trustees is another McCarrick protégé, Bishop Michael Bransfield.

. . . Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

The first executive director of the Papal Foundation, who served from 1988 until 2001, was a priest named Monsignor Thomas Benestad. Benestad, who retired early from his home Diocese of Allentown and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, is accused in the Pennsylvania Grant Jury Report of sexually abusing boy over a period of years in the early 1980s, beginning when he was nine years old.

. . . Benestad, Bransfield, and McCarrick have been three of the most important clerical leaders of the Papal Foundation, and all face serious allegations of sex abuse. Some of these allegations were widely known for decades, but did not prevent the men from rising from one ecclesiastical preferment to the next. Did these men use the grant-making power of the Papal Foundation to curry favor and buy protection from Vatican officials? Did they enable the misappropriation of the Foundation’s charitable grants? The only way to answer these questions is with an independent investigation of the Papal Foundation, along with a forensic accounting of its past grants.

Such an investigation would not face canonical impediments or infringe upon the proper authority of bishops over their dioceses. The Papal Foundation is not an ecclesiastical entity, but an ordinary 501(c)(3) religious non-profit. No permission from Rome is necessary. The Foundation’s board could commission an investigation with a simple vote. If the Foundation does not authorize its own independent investigation, it may nonetheless find itself facing one from state or federal authorities.

The US legal path strikes me as a potentially much more effective route to imposing reform on the Vatican, if the Vatican can't reform itself. In fact, the O'Brien article provides the outline for a "lay-led" investigation of how McCarrick rose in the hierarchy despite his well-known record of abuse -- and it could be done, for instance by an entity connected with Timothy Busch's charities, without approval of the Vatican or the USCCB.

An Italian Take On The Baltimore Fiasco

The visitor who follows the Italian press has sent me a link to this post by the Italian blogger-journalist Marco Tosatti. The translation is mostly Google with some suggested changes from the visitor.

the French and Italian bishops' conferences in recent days have debated and voted for measures to prevent abuse by the clergy without the Holy See batting an eyelid. The American bishops' conference, meeting in Baltimore, to discuss and approve guidelines on the same subject, and the creation of an independent commission of inquiry, received at the last minute the extraordinary and unanimous request-injunction from the Congregation of Bishops (with the obvious endorsement of the reigning Pontiff) not to vote for anything, and to wait for the summit on the abuses of all the Episcopal Conferences of the world scheduled for February. An absolutely unusual move that surprised everyone.

We would like you to read the exceptionally precise report of the Catholic News Agency, in our translation. In the end we will follow it by some comment. We anticipate a note here: Cardinal Daniel Wuerl, accused by the Grand Jury Report of serious omissions in handling cases of abuse in Pittsburgh, and accused by Archbishop Viganò of having very badly monitored the sanctions imposed by Benedict XVI to McCarrick, his friend and predecessor in Washington, he was forced to resign because of the reaction of the faithful. Card. Cupich (pictured with McCarrick while delivering the "Spirit of Pope Francis" award) is another prelate of the "McCarrick supply chain", openly pro-LGBT. Enjoy the reading.

[I'm substituting the original CNA text for Tosatti's translation to Italian-back-to-English here for clarity.] Washington D.C., Nov 16, 2018 / 06:56 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated extensively on a recently proposed policy for handling abuse allegations against bishops, CNA has learned.

Cupich submitted the plan Tuesday to leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference, proffering it as an alternative to a proposal that had been devised by conference officials and staffers.

The conference’s proposed plan would have established an independent lay-led commission to investigate allegations against bishops. The Cupich-Wuerl plan would instead send allegations against bishops to be investigated by their metropolitan archbishops, along with archdiocesan review boards. Metropolitans themselves would be investigated by their senior suffragan bishops.

Sources in Rome and Washington, DC told CNA that Wuerl and Cupich worked together on their alternative plan for weeks, and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore. Cupich and Wuerl are both members of the Congregation for Bishops.

The Cupich-Wuerl plan was submitted to the U.S. bishops even after a Vatican directive was issued Monday barring U.S. bishops from voting on any abuse-related measures. The Vatican suspended USCCB policy-making on sexual abuse until after a February meeting involving the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world.

An official at the Congregation for Bishops told CNA on Thursday that the substance of the plan presented by Cupich at the Baltimore meeting is known in the congregation as “Wuerl’s plan.” The official would not confirm whether the congregation had received an advance copy of the document.

Senior chancery officials in Washington described the plan presented Tuesday as a collaborative effort by the cardinals, telling CNA that Wuerl and Cupich first informed the Congregation for Bishops several weeks ago about their idea for the “metropolitan model” to handle complaints against a bishop, and suggested they had continued to discuss the plan with Congregation officials since that time.

"It was a mutual effort," one Archdiocese of Washington official told CNA.

The idea of amending USCCB policy so that allegations against a bishop would be handled by his metropolitan archbishop was first suggested by Wuerl publicly in August.

While Cupich played an active role in conference sessions this week, and proposed the detailed plan for an alternative to the conference’s special commission, Wuerl did not make any public comment on the plan, which at least some in Rome consider to be “his,” and which he first suggested in public 3 months ago.

Sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions in Baltimore told CNA that Wuerl chose to step back from the plan’s presentation, providing advice and counsel but not seeking to take public credit. A spokesman for Wuerl declined to comment on that decision.

Several bishops in Baltimore told CNA that Cupich appeared to be positioning himself as an unofficial but influential policy-maker in the conference. His status would be strengthened if the plan he introduced in Baltimore gained support in Rome, they said, especially if it were favored over the plan proposed by conference officials.

It is not clear to what extent Cupich considered how the manner in which he presented his plan could be interpreted. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago told CNA that Cardinal Cupich was away, and could not be reached for comment.

A source familiar with the drafting of the alternative proposal told CNA that Wuerl was not involved in the way the plan was presented in Baltimore, saying that Wuerl’s only concern was developing the best possible plan for tackling the sexual abuse crisis, and not “playing games” at the conference.

Many American bishops arrived in Baltimore this week expecting to approve the proposed the independent commission, along with proposed standards for episcopal conduct. Bishops were stunned to discover Monday that they could not vote on the measures, following the last-minute instruction from the Congregation for Bishops, received Sunday night by conference president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.

An Archdiocese of Washington official suggested to CNA that the Congregation for Bishops’ last minute suspension of voting at the Baltimore meeting might have been because the conference’s independent commission proposal was not sent to Rome until Oct. 30.

DiNardo, however, told a press conference Monday that while the draft document for the independent commission had been sent to Rome at the end of October, the USCCB had been in consistent contact with Vatican officials as the texts were developed.

DiNardo said that “When we were in Rome [in October] we consulted with all of [the Vatican dicasteries]. I mean, [that’s what] we do.”

“When I met with the Holy Father in October, the Holy Father was very positive in a general way - he had not seen everything yet - of the kind of action items we were looking to do.”

Cupich spoke from the floor immediately after DiNardo’s announcement of the change Monday morning. The cardinal suggested that the bishops continue to discuss the proposed measures and take non-binding votes on them. He offered no indication at that time that he would introduce a completely different plan.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Chicago cardinal rose to question the premise of the USCCB’s proposed independent commission, asking if it was a reflection of sound ecclesiology. Cupich suggested that the commission could be seen as a way of “outsourcing” difficult situations.

Shortly thereafter, Cupich submitted to conference leaders a seemingly well-prepared and comprehensive “Supplement to the [USCCB] Essential Norms,” which outlined in detail the plan he had developed with Wuerl.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said from the floor that the “metropolitan model” appeared to align closer with the Church’s hierarchical structure.

“I really do favor the use of the metropolitan and the metropolitan review board for these cases… but that would require that the Holy See give metropolitan archbishops more authority than we have,” Chaput told the conference.

Chaput told the bishop that the reason the USCCB executive committee opted to pursue the idea of an independent commission instead of developing a plan based around the metropolitan archbishop was because they did not think the “metropolitan model’ would have support in Rome.

“When we discussed this at the executive committee level we, some people, thought it would be easier for us to develop this independent commission than to get the Church to change canon law,” he said.

Sources close to the USCCB told CNA that if the executive committee had known the Vatican might support the “metropolitan model,” it might have been pursued earlier, with a proposal being circulated to members by the conference leadership. A spokesperson for the USCCB declined to comment on that possibility.

Cupich had suggested during the meeting that either or both plans could be voted on in non-binding resolutions in order to give the Vatican a sense of the American episcopate’s desires. Ultimately, no vote was taken.

Instead, as the Baltimore meeting ended, DiNardo agreed that Cupich’s plan would be developed alongside the independent commission plan, by a special task force consisting of former USCCB presidents Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, and Archbishop Wilton Gregory. DiNardo will have the option of presenting either or both possibilities when he and conference vice president Archbishop Jose Gomez attend the Vatican’s February meeting.

USCCB spokespersons declined several times to comment on any role Cupich or Wuerl, members of the Congregation for Bishops, might have played in developing the congregation’s reaction to the special commission plan.

Some considerations. From the above, we understand that Cupich and Wuerl and the Congregation for Bishops have worked for months behind the US Episcopal Conference, to sabotage the two proposals that the Americans were working on. And of which, however, Rome was continuously informed. The painful justification thus comes down - also served by the major international press agencies, prone to official versions - according to which Rome had been taken by surprise by the proposals of the bishops. No, he was simply preparing a plan provided by members of the power group near McCarrick. And he has chosen to make a nice authoritarian trip to the USCCB, with many greetings to synodicity, independence, autonomy, etc. etc. Pure Brezhnevian centralism.

Second consideration: what obviously annoys the proposal is that the "club boys" ie the bishops can be investigated - investigated, mind you, not judged; investigated - by an external commission made up of lay people. But clericalism? No, that's not to use the word homosexuality. Another lure mirror. The bishops must investigate the bishops, and the laity do not put their noses on it. They pray and pay. So they want Wuerl, Cupich and - until proven otherwise - even the Pope. Business as usual. With the results that, until today we have seen. Fortunately, at least for the United States, lay justice will take care of it. Maybe Federal. Which, however, perhaps will not stop there.

Then they'll have something to laugh about.

This reinforces the idea I began to have yesterday that Cupich, Wuerl, and McCarrick are living in a never-never land where, as long as they can throw the small percentage of gay priests and bishops who can be accused of "pedophilia" under the bus, the rest can carry on with the authorities looking the other way. US corporations have found it's not like that for the last 40 years. I agree with Tosatti -- McCarrick, Wuerl, and presumably Francis will have something to laugh about when they realize they can't get around US law so easily.

What About McElroy, Tobin And Cupich?

Bishop Robert McElroy, 64, and Cardinals Joseph Tobin, 66, and Blase Cupich, 69, make up the next cohort of homosexualist prelates who look as though they will replace the Wuerl generation -- Wuerl is 78. Barring equivalent scandal, we may expect McElroy, Tobin and Cupich to stay influential into their 80s.

One thing that intrigues me is that none has attracted the critical press attention that Wuerl or McCarrick had attracted before their ultimate downfall. Wuerl's opulent lifestyle was covered in Pittsburgh and Washington, while McCarrick's conduct with seminarians had reached the press in 2006, whether or not US bishops could insist they'd heard nothing about it but rumors. But the most we know about McElroy, Tobin and Cupich comes only from an implication in the first Viganò testimony:

Viganò claimed that the appointments of Cardinal Cupich to Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Tobin to Newark “were orchestrated by McCarrick,” among others. He said neither of the names was presented by the nunciature, whose job is traditionally to present a list of names, or terna, to the Congregation for Bishops. He also added that Bishop Robert McElroy’s appointment to San Diego was orchestrated “from above” rather than through the nuncio.

So the "father" of this corruption turns out to be McCarrick, but we don't have a more complete record of sponsors and patrons that we earlier had of figures like Bernard Law or Donald Wuerl. In the wake of the Wuerl-McCarrick scandal, we have only hints. On McElroy,

The Bishop of San Diego has explained why he did not respond to a 2016 letter alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and other Catholic clerics.

The letter was sent to Bishop Robert McElroy by psychotherapist Richard Sipe.

. . . Sipe wrote to Bishop McElroy in 2016, listing allegations against half a dozen bishops – including then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – and warning of a broader problem of chastity violations among clergy.

On Cupich, the most consistent cirticism comes from Church Militant, for instance:

According to a man who thinks he's a so-called transgender woman, the archbishop of Chicago is listening to him instead of his faithful priest, Fr. Paul Kalchik, the pastor of Resurrection Parish.

The biological man, who goes by the name Alexandra Whitney, started a Twitter storm over the weekend claiming to have the cardinal's ear in having Fr. Kalchik ousted:

"I called and spoke to Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of the Diocese of Chicago. I shared my concerns with Cardinal Cupich about Fr. Kalchik's attacks on LGBTQ Catholics and how this priest is harming the Body of Christ."

The most we know about Tobin's rise is that the Archdiocese of Newark is characterized in Engle's The Rite of Sodomy as "gay friendly" and a predictable step in the career of an upwardly mobile gay bishop, as it was for McCarrick. Before he became Archbishop of Indianapolis, he spent about 15 years in the Vatican, where, speaking apparently good Spanish, he seems to have developed ties with Cardinal Bergoglio. Of other patrons and protectors, we seem so far to know little.

UPDATE: Regarding Tobin, we have the episode of the "Nighty-night" tweet, which may or may not have been intended for his sister, as well as the Italian actor who was in residence at the rectory:

In late September, I started getting calls from concerned Catholics in Newark, New Jersey that Cardinal Joseph Tobin “had an Italian actor living at his cathedral basilica rectory.” The callers identified the actor as Francesco Castiglione. They said that Castiglione has been taking English and voice classes at Seton Hall University, and suggested that he is the real recipient of Tobin’s infamous accidental tweet from earlier this year. (“Nighty, Night baby, I love you,” Tobin wrote to someone whom he claimed later was one of his sisters; the sister has never published proof of receiving the tweet.)

. . . I got a call from a well-placed source in Newark. “Francesco is gone. He left the rectory,” my source informed me.

It's probably not an accident that none of these men has an extensive paper trail. If anyone can refer me to additional links, I'll be very happy to follow up.

Raymond Arroyo: "This Corruption Has a Father"

At about 10:40 in the YouTube video below, as he interviews Msgr Charles Pope, Raymond Arroyo says of the scandals in the Second Crisis, "You can track the lineage, they're connected, some of them to Cardinal McCarrick, some of them to others -- but this corruption has a father, and then it is passed along."

This insight gets within shouting distance of the problem, and it's clear that Msgr Pope isn't quite comfortable even with shouting distance -- if Cardinal Tobin succeeds Wuerl in Washington, things could go south for him in a hurry. Arroyo presses on with what seems to be the consensus response to the Second Crisis, a lay-led investigation into how Cardinal McCarrick was able to advance in the hierarchy despite his clear record of sexual predation.

This is a lot like the calculated indirection that "explained" the First Crisis, that it was a series of bad apples, marginal priests who had a pedophilia problem at a time when the condition was poorly understood blah blah blah, and the Virtus program has been put in place to deal with it, blah blah blah. That the nice middle-aged ladies who serve as lectors must be trained in where not to touch toddlers is not, of course, the real issue, but everyone goes on pretending it's the solution.

By the same token, what is a "lay-led investigation" into McCarrick going to turn up that we don't already know? Engle's The Rite of Sodomy covers McCarrick quite fully. For instance,

Cardinal Spellman ordained Father McCarrick on May 31, 1951. He served as secretary to Cardinal Cooke from 1971 to 1977, when Cooke made him an Auxiliary Bishop of New York.

New York insiders glibly refer to McCarrick by his feminine name “Blanche” and Vatican officials have long been aware of his penchant for young handsome seminarians. [74] McCarrick has ordained at least three homosexual bishops.

Yet, here is a man who the Holy See permitted to play the fool before an international audience of reporters on the question of the ordination of homosexual candidates to the priesthood and the existence of a homosexual network within the Church.

How far has the rot gone? All the way to the top. (p 758)

And in the footnote:

74 The charge that Cardinal McCarrick is a homosexual prelate who preys on seminarians was made public by whistleblower Father James Haley in December 2005, shortly after The Rite of Sodomy went to press. See Matt C. Abbott, “Priest accuses U.S. cardinal of abuse of power,” 2 December 2005 at http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_10585.shtml. Several years later, author Richard Sipe confirmed McCarrick’s homosexual proclivities on his web site at http://www.richardsipe.com. “The Archdiocese of Newark September 2009—Questions About the Status of Clergy Abuse Schulte/Gillen; Sita; & McCarrick,” and “The Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome” are two articles by Sipe which further substantiate the charge of homosexual exploitation of clergy and seminarians by the cardinal. According to Sipe, McCarrick’s homosexuality was known at the time of his installation as the first bishop of Metuchen. This was on January 31, 1982. The New Jersey diocese was erected especially for him by Pope John Paul II on November 19, 1981. Readers will recall that McCarrick was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of New York by homosexual Francis Cardinal Spellman, and later served as secretary to Spellman’s successor Terence James Cardinal Cooke, also a homosexual. The McCarrick case is a classic example of intergenerational homosexuality in the Roman Catholic hierarchy today. (p 762)

I don't see the point of a new lay-led investigation that will take months or years to restate what's been documented in a decades-old public record. But Arroyo is correct, and echoes Engle, in saying that one part of the problem is intergenerational homosexuality. The chain of "paternity" referred to by Arroyo is fully known. It's just as well known with his successor Wuerl.

What we don't know yet, at least in the full public record, is what's up with Tobin, Cupich, and others. I would say this is where lay-led investigation would be much more profitable.

More Churning At The Papal Foundation

A visitor sent me a link to an article in the UK Catholic Herald on Cardinal Sean O'Malley replacing Cardinal Wuerl as chairman of the Papal Foundation. Again, it's disappointing that a UK Catholic source is ahead of US sources in reporting on this scandal -- among other things, this causes Catholics to place greater trust in sources like Church Militant, when if the Register would maybe work a little harder, this shouldn't be necessary.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston was elected chairman of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees during a meeting in Washington, D.C. Oct. 30, taking over from Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who served in the position for eight years.

. . . In 2017 Pope Francis asked CardinalWuerl for a $25 million grant through the foundation for the Church-owned hospital Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata, which specializes in researching and treating skin diseases.

The Holy See later declined half the grant after objections from some board members. The critics went to the media, resulting in news coverage that questioned the integrity of the hospital and the wisdom of the foundation’s grant-making process.

The foundation responded to criticism by committing to taking any necessary corrective measures and pledging to provide members with the facts of the grant and a clearer understanding of the foundation’s mission and governance. It also committed itself “to renewing its bond of trust with the Holy See.”

O'Malley has been the chief US figurehead of reform since the First Crisis erupted in 2002, but his performance has been mixed. The historians of the First Crisis haven't yet fully caught up to the Second, and the jury is still out on O'Malley, but his record so far is anything but squeaky-clean.

Engle's The Rite of Sodomy characterizes O'Malley as a "troubleshooter" who emerged under John Paul II as a former Bishop of Fall River, MA who was sent to stabilize the Diocese of Palm Beach, FL in 2002 after Bishop Anthony O’Connell’s resignation there following charges for predatory harassment of eight seminarians. The following year, John Paul sent him to Boston to replace Cardinal Law. However, Engle hasn't followed up on his performance in Boston.

Philip Lawler has discussed O'Malley in Boston in several cases, although again, The Faithful Departed talks primarily of the period leading up to Law's removal. However, he does discuss the Talking About Touching program, required in all Boston Catholic schools. This was a rock-no-boats approach to the First Crisis, in which the US bishops chose to characterize the problem as primarily a pedophile issue, in which all adults, including family members, were potential offenders.

A group of parents in Norwood, MA had concerns about the program, saying that it raised specific sexual matters with very young children, effectively sex education, without giving them a clear moral framework.

But when the Norwood parents brought these concerns to the attention of the Boston archdiocese, they ran into a stone wall. Deacon Anthony Rizzuto, the official responsible for implementing this "personal safety" cur- riculum, admitted that he had not read the Vatican documents that the par- ents cited. . . . Deacon Rizzuto asked the parents why they would not trust the archdiocese to educate their children properly.

Recent history had given parents ample reason to mistrust the archdiocese. But as they investigated the origins of the Talking about Touching curriculum, the Norwood parents found entirely new reasons for suspicion. The program had been developed in Seattle, by the Committee for Children. That group was an offshoot of an organization originally known as COYOTE (an acronym for "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics"), which was founded by a self-described Wiccan priestess to work for the repeal of laws banning prostitution. To be sure, the organization had changed radically since its inception in the early 1970s. But the bizarre history of the Committee for Children certainly gave Catholic parents no reason to assume that the Talking about Touching program would reflect Christian moral principles.

A few Boston pastors joined the Norwood parents in opposition to Talking about Touching. Arguing that the program violated the innocence of children and the rights of parents, Father David Mullen informed the newly installed Archbishop O'Malley that he could not in conscience allow Talking about Touching in his parish. Rejecting the criticism, archdiocesan officials plowed ahead with their plans, announcing that Talking about Touching was to be a required part of the curriculum for every Catholic school and religious-education program. (p 194)

O'Malley inherited another problem that Law hadn't addressed, a group called Voice of the Faithful and a spokesman, Fr Cuenin. Cuenin and the group publicly questioned Church teachings on birth control, divorce, women's ordination, and homosexuality. Law had taken no action, and following his arrival, O'Malley did nothing as well.

Finally, after two more years, O'Malley did remove Cuenin from his pastoral assignment. But even then the story had a strange twist. In September 2005 an audit by archdiocesan officials uncovered financial irregularities in the Newton parish, and Father Cuenin was asked to resign. Yet as the leading dissident in Boston left his post as pastor, archdiocesan officials took great pains to say that Cuenin was not being disciplined for heterodox views. He was removed because he accepted special stipends from parishioners, in a violation of archdiocesan policy. But was that fiscal policy more important than the Church teachings on sexuality and marriage, which Father Cuenin had questioned for years? (p 206)

Church Militant, in a piece from last August, listed O'Malley as among the current senior figures of the Church whose credibility has been damaged by claims of ignorance in the Second Crisis:

Cardinal O'Malley was accused of failing to act on knowledge of McCarrick after a letter was sent to him in 2015. But O'Malley claims that his staff handled the letter and deemed it not credible.